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Reconcile Problem Bank of America Checking Account

MTOrens

I am running Quicken Deluxe for Windows, Version R54.16 on Windows 10. Towards the end of February on a download from Bank of America, four items that came up with a "C" in the clear column will not reconcile. On the previous download, everything reconciled. On this download, these four items, three checks and one deposit would not reconcile. I unchecked them, and it balanced. If I want to leave them in the register, I have to add a line to cancel out the amount of the four items. I have searched over and over and can find no duplicate entries of the four items or a single line equaling the total of the four entries. I have looked at the on-line bank postings and compared them to the Quicken register going back as far as January 25 and have manually reconciled all entries to each other. The strange thing is that my Quicken balance even going this far back is off by the same amount as it is the date this mismatch occured! I have talked to Quicken tech support no less than three times and no help! I have called the bank and explained this to them, and they end up connecting me to Quicken support. Any other thoughts or ideas?

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Mark1104

@MTOrens - what was the opening balance in the register? do you have a backup copy from prior to Feb 15 where you can determine the opening balance? While they should be the same, Quicken may have changed it. That issue does surface from time to time.

As the Quicken balance is $247 less than what BofA OnLine Banking states the balance to be that would suggest it is the opening balance that should be reviewed.

All comments

Mark1104

do you recognize these 4 items? what date did they clear your BofA account? or have they never cleared? (do not look in Quicken - look at Online Banking)

MTOrens

Yes, they are four legitimate items. They posted in the bank account as viewed on-line on the bank website. Three of them posted on Feb. 20 and one posted Feb. 26. I had the three payments entered already in Quicken and the deposit was a Zelle payment to me that the bank downloaded.

Mark1104

so what is the issue? and you may want to include dollar amounts in your response. If the 4 items cleared your bank account and they are listed in Quicken, they reconcile. Change the 'C's to "R"s manually.

what is TODAY's Quicken balance (look at the running total in your register)?

what is TODAY's Bank balance on the website (do not include PENDING items).

what is the opening balance at the very top of your Quicken bank register?

MTOrens

Thank you for working with me on this.

Ok, so here are the specifics: Last download prior to this event was Feb. 15. The balance in the BofA checking account balanced and reconciled with Quicken at $3,556.07.

I had three payments in Quicken that were entered automatically by Bill and Income Reminders. These have been done for some time now and are not new. These were done on Feb. 20, a payment for $16.64 and a payment for $56.17. On Feb 26 a payment for $44.50. The bank downloaded a Zelle payment (deposit) to me on Feb. 20 of $364.35. On Feb. 26 the third payment entered by Bill and Income Reminders was $44.50. These three payments were Auto-Pays, that is they were debited by the payees.

Adding these three payments and one deposit totals $247.04. There were two other payments in this download that weren't affected. An ATM transaction was downloaded dated Feb. 22 for $20.00 and another Auto-Pay for $65.98 on Feb. 25.

The four items in question all displayed a "C" in the clear column. When I hit Reconcile, the balance was off by $247.04. The four items in question above, when I unchecked them, allowed Quicken to reconcile and balance with the bank balance. In order for me to reconcile these items, I had to allow Quicken to enter a payment, or debit to me, of the $247.04.

Long story short, my Quicken total is now $247.04 less than it used to be before this download. As mentioned above, I cannot find any duplicate entries of the individual amounts or the total amount.

[Deleted User]

@MTOrens it could be that the Online Balance reported in Quicken is wrong. Have you verified that the Online Balance in Quicken agrees with the outstanding balance of your online account with BOA?

MTOrens

On Feb 15 prior to this event, Quicken reconciled and balanced with the on-line BofA account. But now, unless I keep the minus $247.04 on the Quicken register, effectively nulling out the four items above, the Quicken balance is short by that amount. Also mentioned above at the start, I went back to Jan 25 and manually reconciled and matched all payments and deposits, and it is short back there by the $247.04.

[Deleted User]

@MTOrens have your tried doing a Validate and Super Validate on your data file?

Validate:

Go to File in Menu Bar
Click Validate and Repair File...
ChecK Validate File
Click OK
Close the Data Log

Super Validate:

Go to File in Menu Bar
Hold CTRL + Shift and click Validate and Repair File...
Check Super Validate File
Click OK
Close the Data Log

After each validates completes, close and reopen Quicken and then try the reconciliation again.

MTOrens

After talking to Quicken tech support after this happened, if I remember correctly, I did the Validate, but I will try it again. I didn't know about the Super Validate. I am in Eastern time here, so I will try to do this tomorrow. Thanks!

Jim_Harman

I have looked at the on-line bank postings and compared them to the Quicken register going back as far as January 25 and have manually reconciled all entries to each other. The strange thing is that my Quicken balance even going this far back is off by the same amount as it is the date this mismatch occured!

Have you reset or disconnected and re-connected the account recently? Sometimes when you do this or seemingly randomly, Quicken changes the Opening Balance of an account, usually the very first transaction in the register. The change is apparently an effort to force the balance in the register to match the downloaded online balance. When this happens, all the balances in the account will be off by the amount of the change, causing reconciliations to fail.

The solution is to go back and correct the Opening Balance transaction. To detect when this has happened, I add the correct opening balance to the memo in the Opening Balance transaction in all of my accounts.

MTOrens

@Jim_Harman I had not recently done a reset before this problem happened. I looked back at the beginning of this account and did not see anything funny or unusual. But this account was started in Microsoft Money in 1998. I started using Quicken in 2012 when Microsoft stopped supporting their product. I am trying a Validate right now, which I have tried before, and if no correction, I will try the Super Validate as @QuickUserPSP suggests above.

Mark1104

As the Quicken balance is $247 less than what BofA OnLine Banking states the balance to be that would suggest it is the opening balance that should be reviewed.

Jim_Harman

Is there a transaction for the $247 discrepancy anywhere in your register that looks like this?

It will have a Category that is the same as your account name in [square brackets]. It might be the first transaction in the register, or on the date you converted from Microsoft Money, or as @Mark1104 says, it might be at the first place in the register when the balance is different from the balance you see in a backup from before this problem started. Note I have entered in the Memo what I think the balance should be in case Quicken changes it on me.

MTOrens

@Jim_Harman I could not find a matching $247 discrepancy anywhere.

MTOrens

@Mark1104 opening a backup file to the prior date sounds like a great idea. I will try that, but we are away right now and won’t be back until after the weekend. I will post back then after I get a chance to try that.

MTOrens

@Mark1104 Eureka! I think you solved it for me! I opened a backup prior to the date in question with the balance/reconcile problem. The current file with the problem shows the opening balance on 9/10/1998 of $1909.03. The backup before the prior date in question (and presumably correct file) shows an opening balance on 9/11/1998 of $1661.99. If you subtract those, the total is , voila! $247.04 greater. I don't know why it changed the date, but it increased the balance by the exact amount of the four items in question and answers the problem of why my reconcile was over by that amount and therefore had to enter a payment of that amount to balance to zero difference. What do you think about the date change? So obviously, the fix to the problem is to change the opening balance to $1661.99.

@Jim_Harman

@QuickUserPSP

MTOrens

See my post immediately above. I went ahead and made the correction by subtracting out the extra $247.04 from the opening balance which had erroneously been added in, apparently when the four items in question had been downloaded and given a "C" in the CLR column. This way, I was then able to remove the Quicken balance adjustment of -$247.04 which had been posted at current date in order to reconcile. The integrity of my file has now been restored. Thank you to all those who assisted me in reaching the resolution to this problem.

Note: I called Quicken Support no less than three times, explaining the problem thoroughly to each agent, and NO ONE could tell me the resolution. I called a fourth time after resolving the problem to let them know. This time, this particular agent knew of this problem and said he would put out a blurb so that other agents who did not know of this problem would be made aware.